


And I'm not sad (we've broken our mirrors)

by lloydsglasses



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blue Mountains | Ered Luin, Depression, Dogs, Durin Family, Dwarves In Exile, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pets, Pre-Canon, Pre-Quest, Thorin makes friends, with a dog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 14:32:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6960868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lloydsglasses/pseuds/lloydsglasses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a dog staring up at him from between his knees.</p><p>Thorin blinks at it, and the dog’s eyes move slowly from his face to the bread in his hand. It lets out a low whine.</p><p>Thorin snorts and goes back to eating his lunch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I'm not sad (we've broken our mirrors)

There is a dog staring up at him from between his knees.

Thorin blinks at it, and the dog’s eyes move slowly from his face to the bread in his hand. It lets out a low whine.

Thorin snorts and goes back to eating his lunch.

\--

The next morning, the dog is waiting for him outside the forge. It follows him in and watches as he makes pots and knives and spoons and all other manner of mundane items, until eventually Thorin nudges it outside with his leg and shuts the door. He can hear the dog whining again but pays it no heed.

Dogs are Mannish animals and Dwarves have little time for them, so when, two days later, the dog is still hanging around, Thorin picks it up and marches over to his employer’s house.

Mr. Lockwood – who owns the forge and pays Thorin well under what he is due, but is at least willing to pay him at all – answers the door with a stern face, and looks unimpressed when Thorin asks to whom the dog belongs.

“It’s a stray,” he says impatiently, and flat out refuses when Thorin tries to foist the dog off on him.

“You’re leaving in a few days,” Mr. Lockwood states, glaring at both Thorin and the dog. “Take it with you. You keep saying your people need food.”

He closes the door abruptly, and Thorin looks down at the creature in his arms. The dog merely wags its tail.

\--

It snows heavily the next day, and Thorin lets the dog inside. It curls up by the fire and watches placidly as he hammers away at the anvil. At lunch time Thorin eats chicken off the bone, and then tosses the remains in the dog’s direction. They’re gobbled up immediately, and Thorin watches as the dog lazily settles back down.

He lets it stay in the forge overnight, just to keep it out of the cold.

\--

He leaves once the weather has evened out again – or evened out as much as it can during this time of year – and sets out on the path that will lead him back to what remains of his family. His return will bring at least some good fortune this time around – he’s carrying enough money to ensure that his nephew will not go hungry this winter.

The road is quiet and Thorin gazes up at the sky as he walks, mind curiously blank. His eyes absently trace over grey clouds, until he hears a soft pitter-patter and looks back to see that the dog is following him. Thorin sighs and tries to shoo it away, but the dog simply trots up to his side and stares up at him with bright eyes, tongue lolling out of its mouth.

When Thorin eventually gives up and starts walking again, the dog follows closely at his side.

\--

He is a few days walk from the Ered Luin settlement, and Thorin has just shrugged his pack on again after he and the dog split a fairly bland rabbit stew between them for lunch, when the dog pads over to him with a small stick in its mouth and drops it at Thorin’s feet.

Thorin stares down at it blankly before he recalls that he has seen dogs do this to Men. Tentatively, he reaches down and picks it up, then throws it a short way down the path and feels immediately silly for doing it. The dog takes off at a sprint, and Thorin adjusts the pack on his shoulders as he watches it return, tail wagging eagerly as it deposits the stick at his feet.

Thorin quirks a small smile, something in his mind pleased that he is at least able to make this simple creature happy, even if he can’t do much else these days.

\--

Four years ago Thorin had watched his grandfather, his mother and his little brother die in battle. Not three days later, when it became clear that Thrain would not be found, he was proclaimed King of the Exiled Dwarves of Erebor and watched as many of his subjects elected not to follow him, now too wary to trust their lives to the line of Durin. He watched over and over again in his dreams as he failed to protect the ones he loved, the people he served, and when he awoke shuddering for breath there was no one there to stroke his hair with gentle fingers, no one to poke him in the side and tell terrible jokes until he forgot what he was upset about. 

Thorin spends most of his time alone these days, but he makes a point of it each year on the anniversary of Azanulbizar. Dwarves usually mark such dates by singing and storytelling, and by drinking in honour of their fallen dead, and Azanulbizar is no exception; there is a small memorial gathering in their Ered Luin settlement every year, though he has never been to it. 

This year he doesn’t even have to avoid it, because he isn’t back in time. He spends most of the evening huddled in a damp little cave a day’s walk from the settlement, watching morosely as a storm rages outside. It is wet and noisy and cold, and his fire keeps blowing out. He sits alone in the dark and misses his family so much that it hurts, and his eyes burn.

But then, he isn’t really alone this time. All of a sudden a dog is licking at his face and pawing at his chest, and it startles him so much that he winds up falling over backwards. The dog barks enthusiastically, edging forward to sit firmly on top of his chest and licks his nose. Thorin blinks up at it for a moment, then abruptly bursts out laughing.

He falls asleep with a lump of warmth burrowed into his side and, although he’ll need to wash his face rather thoroughly in the morning, he feels a lot lighter than he has in a long time.

\--

Thorin decides that it would be best to stop calling the dog ‘it’; he settles on ‘she’ instead, because on closer inspection it is discovered that she is female. (Dís would probably wallop him for such normative thinking, but he suspects dogs don’t have gender identities in quite the same way as people, so it seems unlikely that the dog will really mind.)

The dog has thick fur that is soft to the touch and mostly black, though she has an uneven patch of shocking white fur around one of her eyes.

 _Patch,_ Thorin thinks as he scratches gently behind her ears.

“Patch,” he says aloud, and Patch wags her tail happily.

\--

Thorin knocks on Dís’ door and isn’t sure what to say when she opens it. She looks like she’s about to hug him, and Thorin doesn’t really know what to do with that, so he quickly crouches down and starts fussing with Patch’s ears.

“Uncle Thorin!” He hears a shout from within the small house, and looks up to see his nephew running towards them, Víli following along with an indulgent smile. Fíli stops short when he reaches the door, and stares.

“Why is there a dog?” he asks, though he seems more excited about this development than anything.

“It followed me here,” says Thorin quietly, and the dog in question looks up at him as if to say, _only because you let me._

Fili shuffles forward a little and reaches out one of his tiny hands. Patch turns her head into it, and Fíli giggles as her nose rubs against his palm. 

“What’s it called?” he asks.

“Her name’s Patch.” Even Thorin can hear obvious affection in his own voice, and he pretends not to see the look that his sister exchanges with her husband. 

\--

Dwalin returns to the settlement a scant few days after Thorin gets back, and he laughs loud and long when Dís tells him that their noble king has adopted a scrawny mutt called Patch that he found in the wilds. Thorin feels his chest tighten abruptly and he pushes himself out of his chair and leaves. He goes and sits on the floor of his own bedroom, arms wrapped loosely around Patch while his fingers comb through her fur.

By the time Dwalin enters Patch is lying between his knees while Thorin strokes the back of her neck. Dwalin leans against the opposite wall and watches them. Thorin doesn’t look at him and can’t think of anything to say.

“You need to get rid of the dog,” Dwalin finally says, and Thorin does look up at that, hand pausing where it strokes over Patch’s ears.

“We barely have enough food as it is,” continues Dwalin, and his eyes bore into Thorin’s. “We can’t feed a dog as well.”

Thorin swallows and looks down at Patch again. She’s nosing at Thorin’s hands as if to ask why he’s stopped giving her attention.

He doesn’t say anything, and eventually Dwalin sighs and leaves.

\--

Thorin takes Patch out on walks every morning and sometimes, if the mood strikes him, he stays out all day. It isn’t a very clever thing to do in the middle of winter, as his sister yells at him on more than one occasion, but it’s easier than sitting in the house and failing to make conversation. More often than not Thorin likes to walk South along the banks of the Little Lune, watching fondly as Patch splashes in the water. He dries and warms her with a spare fur that he brings along, and she settles quietly on his lap as he sits in the shadow of the mountains and gazes off into the distance, at where he imagines Belegost used to be. _History repeats itself,_ he thinks sometimes, bitterly, and wonders if all Dwarven cities are destined to be lost.

Other times Fíli will walk with them, and Thorin will deliberately take a much shorter path so as not to tire his young nephew out (or incur Dís’ wrath). Fíli likes to chase Patch along the little path, and he likes to pick up sticks for her to fetch, and he likes to rub her belly when they sit down for a break. He takes Thorin’s hand sometimes when they walk, but Thorin finds he doesn’t mind, finds that it’s easier to allow contact with a seven-year-old than someone who can read his emotions in the tension of his body.

When he’s not walking he likes sitting in his room, listening to the house creak around him. He turns in early most nights and lets Patch sleep at the bottom of his rickety little bed, her body a warm, steady weight atop his feet. 

\--

Dwalin is probably right about the dog, but it doesn’t matter in the end.

Patch has started whining whenever she’s standing up and there comes a day where she won’t stand at all, no matter what Thorin does. Eventually he picks her up himself and carries her all the way to a nearby Mannish settlement. There’s an elderly lady who he has seen walking her dogs before, so he wanders the village until he is directed to her house.

Her eyes turn kindly when she notices the dog in his arms, and she lets him in without question, directing him to sit at her kitchen table while she examines Patch.

“She’s in a lot of pain,” she says gravely, and turns to look Thorin straight in the eye. “Killing her would be a kindness.”

Thorin swallows and stares glumly down at the patterned tablecloth in front of him, and thinks that he probably should have realised by now that good things do not last.

\--

He does it himself, the following morning. Thorin carries Patch into the woods and finds a small clearing where he lays her down and sits beside her for a long while, scratching behind her ears and letting her lick at his fingers. He gives her some of the tonic the old Woman said would put her to sleep, and then he takes out his knife.

She is buried in a shallow grave, and Thorin wonders at himself for being so ridiculous; Patch is not a Dwarf and will not go to the Halls of Mandos, and yet he cannot stop himself from piling a few stones atop the grave for safe passage.

It snows as he walks back to the house, and he watches his breath mist in the air with a peculiar sort of detachment.

\--

Thorin sits in the main room beside his family for the rest of the day and can’t think of anything worth saying. He flinches slightly when, in the early evening, Fíli tugs at his leg.

“Uncle, where is Patch?” he asks, entirely curious.

Everyone else goes silent and Thorin can feel the eyes of the entire room upon him. He takes a deep breath. 

_She’s gone,_ he wants to say, but it gets stuck somewhere in his throat. He stares down at his hands for a long while and doesn’t say anything.

The pressure on his knee suddenly increases and before he knows it Fíli is clambering into his lap and wrapping his little arms around Thorin’s neck.

“I love you, uncle,” he says earnestly and kisses Thorin’s cheek. The lump in Thorin’s throat seems to grow and he can feel his eyes stinging. His own arms wrap around Fíli’s back, gathering the little boy to his chest and burying his face in soft golden hair, partly hoping to hide the tears that he’s sure have started to slip down his face.

 _I love you too,_ Thorin wants to say, but it gets stuck in his throat.

**Author's Note:**

> I'M SORRY I JUST WANTED TO WRITE A FIC ABOUT THORIN BEING ALL AFFECTIONATE AND CUDDLY WITH A DOG OR A HORSE AND THEN THIS HAPPENED I'M SO SORRY
> 
> Feel free to come yell at me on [tumblr.](http://lloydsglasses.tumblr.com) XD


End file.
